A) Faceless, never to be seen B) Speaking too quickly to be understood C) Trying to explain PowerPoint slides with text that is too long and too blurry D) Glug, glug, glug E) ALL OF THE ABOVE 

(via You Do the Math!) As the first thing students encounter in a course, the syllabus can also set the tone for the course and students’ expectations for what is to come. We see a lot of funny things in syllabi and while these examples might not make students laugh, they certainly gave us a chuckle…and then we went to work on fixing them.

(via In Absentia) One of the challenges of teaching and learning online is creating and maintaining a sense of presence, by instructors and by students. In a face-to-face learning environment, it is more obvious who is attending and participating and who is not. When an instructor is absent, it’s not uncommon for class to be canceled for the day or week. But what happens in an online course when an instructor simply fails to show up at all? 

(via It might be poodagogy if...) What is poodagogy? What are the tell-tale signs? How do I know if my course has it? Is it catching? Is there a cure? While poodagogy may be in the eye of beholder, there are some practices that are inarguably bad and should be avoided. We asked for your examples of poodagogy and here's what you gave us, a sampling of some really poodagogical stuff found in actual courses.

(via Reliable Sources) When assigning research to students, it is common for professors to place restrictions such as requiring that sources be cited or come from a peer-reviewed academic source or absolutely outlawing the use of Wikipedia. Students are often criticized for taking the first thing Google gives them rather than taking the time to really analyze what they’re reading, connect it to the course content, and synthesize it into new knowledge. But what happens when a course designer does the same thing? Or worse?

(via Egad! eLearning and Global Accessibility Awareness Day) Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD),  so we thought we would like to share some thoughts. Here we are now in 2018 and while we are encouraged by the increased level of awareness of accessibility we see on campus, not a day goes by without some major face-palm moments. This would be very discouraging if not for the fact that each incident is an opportunity for education and awareness. Sure, we thought we would be farther along in quest for universal accessibility 28 years after ADA, but the war is not over and we ARE winning many battles, one syllabus, one course at a time.

(via Simon Says...) Alignment. Instructional designers are obsessed with it. Admittedly we can get a little hung up on verbs but it’s all in the name of alignment. We start with learning outcomes and look for assessments that match the learning outcomes. A good learning outcome should be measurable with an assessment and a good assessment should measure mastery of the learning outcome. When everything lines up, instructional designers get all warm and fuzzy. When things don’t line up, they get sad, very sad, and it all becomes like a game of “Simon Says” gone very wrong.